


The End Crowns the Work

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Ashara/Lyanna, Dead Ladies Club, Gen, Queen Rhaenys Targaryen, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: On the morning of her eighteenth nameday Rhaenys Martell Targaryen, First of Her Name, woke up in a brothel.Or,Ned Stark reached Elia and her children first.
Comments: 45
Kudos: 199
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	The End Crowns the Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lastwingedthing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwingedthing/gifts).



On the morning of her eighteenth nameday Rhaenys Martell Targaryen, First of Her Name, woke up in a brothel. 

It was the same nightmare as always that woke her: she was huddled in the dark under her father’s bed, her hands clawed to bloody ribbons, the screams ringing in her ears, getting closer, then the thud of heavy boots, and a hand reached under the bed and latched onto her ankle...

Rhaenys woke with a start, took a shuddering breath, and turned her head to see the brothel boy regarding her with his head propped up on his hand. He was beautiful, with golden skin and green flecked eyes.

“I’ve never serviced a queen before,” he said, resting his other palm on Rhaenys’ belly, drawing her attention to the sweet ache between her thighs.

“Perhaps you will again,” Rhaenys lied. The beautiful boy had served his purpose. 

Rhaenys’ mother had convinced the regent of the political wisdom of keeping their options regarding marriage alliances open. But soon enogh Rhaenys would have to do her duty as queen and sell a place in her bed, by her side, and as father to her children. So be it, but Rhaenys’ maidenhead was hers to dispose of as she saw fit.

The boy’s smile was gentle. “Would you like me to help you dress?”

Rhaenys had travelled to Chataya’s using the tunnels that threaded beneath the city - it was her cousin Tyene who had told her of the secret passage between the Red Keep and the brothel, apparently there was a similar one leading to the Great Sept - and to make the journey easier she’d come dressed in boy’s clothes. 

Unlike her court gowns she didn’t need help donning her shirt and breeches, but she let the boy help her just to feel his hands on her skin again. 

Before he handed her down the ladder which descended to the tunnels the boy raised Rhaenys’ hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. “My queen.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

*

The sun had risen over the horizon by the time Rhaenys arrived back in the Red Keep, but using the secret passageways she managed to enter the royal apartments unseen. She was not surprised to find her ladies-in-waiting already present, but instead of fretting over the queen’s absence she found Princess Daenerys Targaryen and Lady Sansa Stark perched on the edge of her bed exchanging angry, hissed whispers. 

Lady Sansa’s head snapped up at Rhaenys’ arrival; she stood and smoothed down her skirts. “How were your prayers?”

The queen had told her ladies that she planned to spend the night before her nameday praying for wisdom in the sept; Lady Sansa, at least, had seemed to believe her. Rhaenys’ lips quirked and she looked at Daenerys, who at newly fifteen considered herself far above the thirteen year old Sansa, expecting her to meet her eyes knowingly. Instead the queen’s aunt seemed to have become overcome with fascination for her own shoes.

“What’s wrong?” Rhaenys demanded, stepping closer. Daenerys looked up, her eyes red and her bottom lip swollen and split.

“Viserys,” Sansa huffed when Daenerys stayed stubbornly silent. “He still wants to marry her, and he’s not going to accept no for an answer. If I hadn’t walked in-”

“Sansa!” Daenerys snapped, and Rhaenys touched her cheek soothingly, trying and failing to keep her expression unchanged when she saw that Daenerys’ lip had split not when she'd been struck, but bitten.

“That will not happen,” she promised. “Such a marriage would never be allowed. You know how my mother feels about sibling matches.”

Whoever Rhaenys’ eventual husband was, she had always known it would not be one of her two brothers.

“We should tell my father,” insisted Sansa. “He could protect you, Dany.”

“That won’t be necessary” said Rhaenys, tilting Daenerys’ face back until their eyes met. “I will protect you. I am the queen, and I will keep you safe, aunt.” 

Daenerys inclined her head, just slightly, and said, “You should change. Your mother will be expecting you.”

*

Rhaenys had bathed and put on a morning dress by the time her brother arrived to escort her to the queen mother’s apartments. “I’ve brought you a nameday gift,” Jon Snow announced, holding an evil-eyed and yowling tomcat at arm’s length.

“Balerion!” Rhaenys cried with delight, scooping the cat into her arms. He swiped at her, ripping three long tears in her bodice; no matter, Lady Sansa had a neat hand at needlework. “Where did you find him?”

“He was lurking behind the kitchens.” Jon Snow was wearing his thick hawking gauntlets, which rather gave away that Balerion had been strongly motivated to remain where he was. The cat gave another angry hiss for form’s sake, and settled down into his mistress’s arms. 

Jon Snow offered Rhaenys his arm, realised that she needed both of hers to hold Balerion, and fell into step beside her. “Big day,” he observed. 

The queen’s nameday was the business of the whole court, indeed the whole realm, but this year would also mark the lord regent stepping down and the true beginning of the reign of Rhaenys I.

“It’s not just the lord regent,” said Jon, correctly reading his sister’s pensive look, “my mother is leaving too. Did she tell you?”

Rhaenys frowned. “No.” 

Their brother Aegon had always hated Lady Lyanna; it was source of constant friction between him and Jon. Aegon blamed her for their father’s death, even though Princess Elia had cautioned both her children that the blame for Rhaegar’s death lay in equal parts with Robert Baratheon and Rhaegar himself. 

For herself, Rhaenys always remembered the day not long after Jon and his mother had come to King’s Landing when Lady Lyanna had found her hiding from her mother and the regent under a bed, and instead of telling on her Lyanna had crawled in next to her. ‘I’m scared too,’ she'd said. 

“Is she returning to Winterfell?” 

“Starfall,” said Jon. “Lady Ashara has been feeling homesick for Dorne, and has invited my mother to join her there.” 

Rhaenys looked sideways at her brother; the splotches of high colour showing through Jon’s patchy first attempt at a beard told her that he was well aware of the relationship between his mother and Lady Ashara. For his sake Rhaenys hoped that he’d found out in a more circumspect manner than Rhaenys herself, who had wandered into the Maidenvault in search of her mother, only to walk in on the ladies Lyanna and Ashara in an extremely compromising position. The word _maiden_ vault had been tinged with irony for her ever since. 

The lord regent was standing down, and now Ash and Lyanna were leaving too. Rhaenys looked at Jon Snow; that she was closer to her baseborn half brother than to the trueborn son of Rhaegar and Elia felt like it ought to have been the beginning of a joke, but once you thought about it it started to make sense: as a bastard Jon had no cause to feel that Rhaenys had stolen a throne from him.

“Will you go too?”

“My mother would be happy to have me join her in Dorne, my uncle says I would be welcome in Winterfell,” said Jon, “but-”

“Stay here.” Rhaenys stopped in her tracks. “Join the queensguard. Take the white.” 

Jon turned to her, solemn faced. “I would be honoured, but-”

“But...?” Rhaenys’ expression turned teasing. “If it’s about the no girls rule then there are tunnels between the Red Keep and Chataya’s brothel.”

Jon blushed again, redder this time, and Rhaenys guessed that he knew about the tunnels but hadn’t used them yet. “I’m young for a place on the queensguard.”

That was true, even though at fourteen Jon Snow often shamed full grown knights in the training yard, it was also not the real reason. “And I was four years old when they dragged me out from under our father’s bed and crowned me.”

“I’m a bastard,” Jon said finally. He didn’t often complain about having been born on the wrong side of the blanket, but there were whispers around court - not least from Aegon and Viserys.

“Nobody cares about that,” insisted Rhaenys, and Jon Snow snorted audibly. “Nobody who matters cares about that.” Rhaenys’ list of people whose opinions truly mattered was quite short, and consisted of herself, her mother, and occasionally, when it couldn’t be avoided, the lord regent. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”

Rhaenys was reminded that as a child Jon Snow had been able to wallow in sulky, sullen silence better than any ten other children.”Fine,” he finally said, his face cracking into a smile. “I promise that I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” said Rhaenys, grinning and pulling ahead of him, “now hurry up before we’re late for breakfast.”

*

The tables in the queen mother’s rooms were laden with food; blood oranges and dates from Dorne, cakes of honey and lemon, and those little fish stuffed with rice and spices which were the queen’s favourite. 

The royal household had been shed of many of its usual hangers-on. Prince Aegon was there, looking strangely diminished without Jon Connington shadowing him. The queen’s uncle, Prince Viserys, turned his lean and hungry gaze on her only long enough to establish that Daenerys wasn’t on her heels; Lady Sansa had stayed back too to make Dany’s absence less obvious. The ladies Lyanna and Ashara stood close together off to one side; Ash’s pinky finger hooked around Lyanna’s. The queen mother, Princess Elia Martell, sat in her rolling chair in the centre of the room, the lord regent by her side. 

Rhaenys let Balerion jump down, where he darted under the nearest table to stalk crumbs and rice stuffed fishies, and stooped to embrace her mother and kiss both her her cheeks. Lyanna and Ashara crossed the room to fuss over her as though she was a favoured niece, which Rhaenys supposed in a way she was. Aegon wished her a happy nameday and pressed a stiff kiss to her cheek, there was a cut on his top lip where he’d caught himself shaving; Viserys made to follow suit until Jon Snow, catching his sister’s flinch, interposed himself between her and their older, trueborn uncle. 

The queen piled her plate with food; the previous nights exertions in the brothel had left her hungrier than she realised. 

“Your Grace.”

Rhaenys turned to face Lord Eddard Stark. “My lord regent.”

“No longer.” 

“Lord Stark, then.”

Rhaenys flashed back to the nightmare that had woken her at dawn, the same nightmare that had woken her at least once a week since the age of four. The blood, the screaming, the unbreakable grip on her on her ankle as she was dragged into the light. That was where Rhaenys always woke, before Eddard Stark, rough voiced and sad-eyed, had ordered his men to lower their swords, before gentle hands had prised loose Rhaenys’ death grip on Balerion. ‘Let him go, sweetling,’ Lord Stark had said, ‘you’re hurting him.’ 

“Might I have a moment, Rhaenys?”

“We can take a walk around my mother’s gardens.” The queen mother’s apartments were on the ground floor of the Maidenvault, with wide double doors that opened out into a riotous, sweet smelling garden that Princess Elia could roll her chair into on those days when she couldn’t walk at all.

Lord Stark fell into step beside her. “Now that I am no longer required as regent I plan to return to Winterfell.”

“You’ve missed it, I know.” 

“I fear that I have been a poor lord of it,” he said. “And a poor husband and father to my wife and son.”

Rhaenys did not entirely disagree - the queen had been very small when Catelyn Stark left King’s Landing for Winterfell with little Lord Robb in swaddling clothes and Sansa in her belly - but instead of lying, or agreeing with him, she said what Princess Elia would have wanted her to say: “We needed you here.”

Lord Stark cleared his throat. “My son Robb will actually soon be arriving in King’s Landing. Sansa was very young when I brought her to live at court, and it will do them good to get to know one another as brother and sister.”

Rhaenys picked a blood orange segment from her plate, she bit down on it, and the act of sucking the juice from her fingers hid her smirk from Lord Stark; let him pretend his heir was coming to King’s Landing to visit his long lost sister and not as part of the inevitable tsunami of royal suitors if it salved his pride. “I am sure I will look favourably on Lord Robb when he gets here.” 

Lord Stark changed the subject. “Before I leave we must talk about your small council.”

“I have already asked Willas Tyrell to serve as my master of coin and he has accepted.”

Lord Stark nodded approvingly, as Rhaenys had known he would. “A wealthy young lord, but not a profligate one. A fine choice, Your Grace.”

Rhaenys inclined her head graciously. “And for my mistress of ships-”

“Mistress?” Lord Stark frowned. “I thought we had agreed on Stannis Baratheon.”

“You agreed,” said Rhaenys pointedly. “Lord Baratheon’s brother and my father murdered each other at the Ruby Ford, or had you forgotten?”

Lord Stark didn’t rise to the bait and simply said, “You aren’t that petty.”

“No,” agreed Rhaenys, “and if I truly believed in Stannis Baratheon’s mastery at sea then I would name him to my small council, but as it stands I believe in the naval prowess of a proven pirate more than that of a man’s whose greatest accomplishment at sea is taking Dragonstone from a dying woman, a toddler, and a newborn. Asha Greyjoy will make a fine mistress of ships.”

After fourteen years in King’s Landing Lord Stark was adept at picking his battles, they all were. “I have written to Jon Arryn to ask him if he’d be willing to serve as your hand-”

“No,” said Rhaenys sharply.

“No?”

“I plan to ask my uncle to serve as hand of the queen.”

“Your-” Lord Stark paused for a long time “-uncle.”

“Not my father’s brother.” Rhaenys was tempted to ask Lord Stark what she ought to do about Viserys, but he was leaving, and she must follow her own counsel. “I will ask my mother’s brother, my Uncle Oberyn to serve as my hand.”

“The Red Viper,” Lord Stark spoke slowly and Rhaenys got the impression he was choosing his words carefully, “is a bold and wily lord, and loyal to your mother above all. But he does not always understand the virtue of compromise.” 

“He does not need to. My mother understands compromise, as do I. After all, my entire reign is an example of the virtue of compromise.” Those most loyal to her father and grandfather had said that new child queen was more Dornish than Targaryen, while the rebels had been angry that after all they’d done there was a Targaryen of any stripe on the throne, and everyone had been angry that she was a girl. “My mother once told me that you know you’ve made a fair compromise when everyone is equally unhappy.”

“Your mother is a wise woman,” said Lord Stark, smiling fondly. “Listen to her and she will not steer you wrong.”

*

The nameday breakfast had been for the royal household, but the body of the celebrations took place throughout the day and into the evening in the castle grounds for the smallfolk and spilling out of the Red Keep’s many halls for the courtiers and highborn guests. The queen had made sure she was seen flitting in and out, pressing hands with the highborn and kissing the babes of the common folk, but she also found a few hours to snatch some sleep. 

Rhaenys was on her way to the feast in the great hall in the company of her ladies and Jon Snow, when they were intercepted by her other brother. “Sister.” Prince Aegon was dressed in red and black, of course; the Targaryen colours clashed with Rhaenys’s own colouring and she wore a court gown of deep orange finished with thread of gold. “A moment of your time.”

Rhaenys tipped her head to Jon Snow, indicating that he should escort the girls on. Dressed in cream calfskin breeches and cloak, and looking desperately uncomfortable to have found himself with a girl on each arm, Rhaenys thought again what a good queensguard Jon would make. 

“Have you thought about what I asked of you?” said Aegon. Recently he had started affecting to stroke his chin when he spoke in order to draw attention to the ruby ring of their father’s that he wore on his thumb; Jon Snow had an identical ring that Rhaenys had never once seen him wear, and Rhaenys had turned hers into a pendant that she only wore on occasions when she and the regent had cause to remind an intransigent courtier that she was Rhaegar’s daughter as well as Elia’s. “All you need must do is stand up tonight and announce that you are abdicating the throne in favour of Rhaegar’s trueborn son, as it always should have been.”

Rhaenys snorted. “I have always admired this magic trick of yours, brother.”

“What trick?”

“The one where you open your mouth and Jon Connington’s words come out.”

“None of the fault is Lord Connington’s,” spat Aegon. “The blame lies with our mother: she never should have crowned you, she never should have sent me away!”

“She sent you away to save you! She didn’t-” It was a deep and secret hurt, locked in a heavy box near Rhaenys’ heart, bound with heavy chains, and guarded by a dragon: Princess Elia had sent her son away to protect him, but not her daughter. 

“Our mother is Dornish,” said Aegon bitterly, “she saw a chance to crown her daughter and she took it.”

It was absurd, but Aegon believed it wholeheartedly. Instead of getting into another circular argument Rhaenys drew herself up to her full height; she was shorter than Aegon, but even symbolically the crown more than made up for a deficit of a few inches. “ _Never_ say that again. If you won’t stop for the sake of our mother who loves you, then stop because I am your queen and I command it.”

Aegon snorted angrily, turned on heel and departed. Rhaenys exhaled deep and slow, and behind her the queen mother said, “It is my fault things between the two of you are like this.”

Rhaenys turned with a start. “Mother. I didn’t hear you.” Princess Elia was leaning on a cane of dark wood. “Where is your rolling chair?”

The queen mother raised her chin proudly. “Your court will see me walk in to your throne room on my own feet.”

And Rhaenys doubted that many of them would think to wonder why the queen mother did not rise again for the rest of the evening, and now the two people most likely to concern themselves with Princess Elia’s comfort were leaving the city... “Has Ashara told you of her plans?”

Princess Elia chuckled, letting Rhaenys help her over to one of the stone benches that dotted the hallway. “If Ash had seduced Lady Lyanna back at Harrenhal when the notion first occurred to her then much of what happened afterwards might have been avoided.” 

Rhaenys sat next to her mother, smoothed down her skirts, and said, “About what Aegon said-”

Princess Elia touched her daughter’s cheek, and revealing how much of her children’s argument she had overheard said, “I begged Varys to take you too, I begged on my knees, but he said your face was too recognisable and that you’d be safer in the Red Keep.” Elia’s laugh was bitter and hollow. “A day hasn’t passed since where I haven’t thought in horror about what might have befallen you if anyone other than Ned had reached us first.” 

Rhaenys thought again of her reoccurring nightmare; in her dream it wasn’t Lord Stark coming for them, in her dream it was a monster. 

“I did not know where Aegon was or if the Spider would ever return him to me, we did not know that Lyanna Stark lived or that she was with child, and had the throne been sitting empty when the armies arrived then even Ned could not have protected us. And yet-” Elia pressed a kiss to Rhaenys’ forehead, as though she was still a small child “-I would have spared you this burden if I could.”

Rhaenys covered her mother’s hand with her own. “You had a daughter of Rhaegar’s body and one honourable man, and with that you secured a dynasty, it’s more than anyone else could have done.” The queen stood and held out her hand to her mother. “Come, my court will see you walk into the throne room on my arm.”

*

There were singers dotted throughout the throne room, and as Rhaenys passed through The Bear and the Maiden Fair mingled discordantly with Brave Danny Flint. The singers were competing for attention with jugglers, acrobats, fire breathers, and sword swallowers. Lions, leopards, and bears in paced in their cages, and maidens made sure that whichever lordlings or squires they’d set their sights on were on hand to catch them before pretending to swoon in fear. 

Rhaenys caught the eye of her new master of coin surrounded by his family; she had to admire the naked ambition of the Tyrells in sending all their children to court, if the young queen’s eye was not caught by the wit of Lord Willas or the broad shoulders of Ser Garlan, seemed to go the Tyrell thinking, then perhaps it would be caught by the fair maid Margaery.

Asha Greyjoy was here too, the youngest and least objectionable of her three brothers by her side. 

The pouting yellow haired young man leering at the queen was Joffrey Hill, the bastard of Casterly Rock, here with his mother. In years past it had been common sport at court to speculate on who Joffrey’s natural father was, because it certainly wasn’t the minor Lannister cousin Cersei Lannister had been hastily married off to, but Joffrey had grown up so favouring his mother that it became pointless to guess at the other half of his parentage. 

The brothers of Robert Baratheon were also in attendance. Rhaenys had never taken to either the perpetually aggrieved Stannis or the permanently smiling Renly, but Daenerys had squirrelled herself happily in among their party. The children of Queen Rhaella had been... hostages to use Viserys’ word, wards if you preferred Daenerys’ of Stannis Baratheon in the years after he'd taken Dragonstone, and Dany at least was always happy to see him, seeing in him a bulwark against her brother.

Speaking of Viserys, he was red faced and so deep in his cups that even the usually sympathetic Aegon and Connington were regarding him with a mixture of distain and dismay.

Rhaenys gained the steps to the throne, turned to face the throng in the great hall, and sat. The metal bit uncomfortably into her flesh, but it had never drawn blood before and didn’t this time. The queen clapped her hands and the mummers, who had been waiting for their cue, began their performance. 

It was the same play as was performed every year on the queen’s nameday. A child from Flea Bottom had been chosen to portray the child queen, and was set upon a hastily assembled wooden throne; mummers who had been loitering in the crowd hastily donned masks and hoisted puppet soldiers, forming three columns and marching around the throne room portraying the spears of Dorne, Tywin Lannister’s undeclared force, and the leaderless rebel army all converging on King’s Landing. The child on stage was joined by two mummers playing the widowed princess and rebel lord - the actor portraying Princess Elia walked with what Rhaenys felt was a truly unnecessary hunch - as they hastened to crown the young queen before the armies arrived. 

Rhaenys led the obligatory applause, then with more enthusiasm summoned the child who’d played her, kissed both her cheeks, and set her on a chair near the throne with a plate of sweets. As a special treat this year she had the sewn cloth kitten the girl had been using as a prop replaced with the real thing from the litter one of the stable cats had just had. 

The awestruck girl gripped the little grey kitten too tight. “Let him go, sweetling,” said the queen, easing the child’s grip on the kitten. “You’re hurting him.” 

Once the grinning child was stroking her purring kitten, Rhaenys turned her attention back to the celebrations. A brother of the Night’s Watch was making an oft practiced, bored sounding speech about the service and honour to be found in taking the black in the hope that a few lordlings deep enough in their cups would agree to go with him and be halfway to the Wall before they fully sobered up.

“Thank you, brother,” said Rhaenys, rising from her throne. The black brother looked impatient for the queen to offer up the castle convicts so that he could round up his unwilling recruits and be on his way; instead Rhaenys raised her voice so as to be heard and said, “I want to take this opportunity to thank my father’s brother, Prince Viserys, for staying at court all these years to help me rule. However I know he has always longed to serve and protect the realm as my father did. Uncle, I will no longer stand in your way. You may take the black.”

The black brother looked stunned, which was nothing compared to Viserys: his face grew even redder, and his mouth opened and closed in silence. Go on, Rhaenys silently dared him, say that you don’t want to go, admit that you’re a creep and a coward who wants to remain in King’s Landing in the hopes of raping his sister. 

The great hall erupted into cheers and stomps. Viserys looked to Aegon and Connington for aid but none was forthcoming, and he realised he had left it too late to object and had no choice but to nod and follow the black brother from the hall. 

Most of those in great hall were still cheering, some because they were happy to see the back of Viserys, but most because they’d been drinking for most of the day. Daenerys was clapping, and looked as though she’d like to be cheering louder but was wary of drawing attention to herself, while Princess Elia and Lord Stark wore matching expressions of not total disapproval.

Connington was looking at Rhaenys as though she’d just declared open war, and she was sorely tempted to call the black brother back and offer him up the lord of Griffin’s Roost; mayhaps relations with Aegon would improve without Connington pouring poison into his ear, although it was just as likely that Aegon would regard that as the final betrayal. 

The queen picked her brother out in the crowd, willing him to understand: don’t make me exile you too, don’t make me do that to our mother, because I will.


End file.
